Afghanistan War

The Afghanistan War (7 October 2001-28 December 2014) was the period during which the United States invaded Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, which killed almost 3,000 Americans. The goal of the invasion was to destroy the al-Qaeda terrorist group's training camps in the country and to overthrow the extremist Taliban regime, which gave protection to the terrorists, and the USA was assisted in the invasion by a coalition of Western countries that included the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, and Canada. The American involvement in the invasion did not require a large ground force, however, as they were allied to the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance; the Green Berets helped the Northern Alliance in taking control of the country as the US Air Force launched bombing raids on Afghanistan from nearby Central Asian countries. By December 2001, Kabul, Kandahar, and the other major cities were in Northern Alliance hands, and the al-Qaeda training camps were destroyed and their forces decimated. The local tribes had Hamid Karzai named the new leader of Afghanistan, and he would be elected president in 2004.

Karzai's Afghanistan became an Islamic republic sympathetic to the West, but the government proved to be corrupt and ineffective, and neither the Taliban nor al-Qaeda were defeated. Instead, al-Qaeda's leadership and fighters fled to the Pakistani border regions, and the Taliban launched a 2002 offensive funded by the opium harvest. The UN Security Council formed the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) coalition to assist in the maintenance of security during the occupation of Afghanistan, and the coalition forces worked together with the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police to conduct counter-insurgency operations. The ISAF forces faced increased opposition as more US forces headed to fight in the simultaneous Iraq War against other Islamist militants, and the ISAF forces began to withdraw after 2008. In 2014, the last major US forces left the country, leaving behind only a handful of advisers. The Taliban insurgency became very successful as they faced the inexperienced ANA soldiers without their US allies, and they occupied large pockets of the country, as did the Islamic State terrorist group. The war is often said to have ended on 28 December 2014 with the US withdrawal, but the Taliban insurgency is still ongoing, with Afghanistan nearing 40 years of continuous civil war.